The Field Returns After Six Years With New EP
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- Axel Willner (the Field) released 'Now You Exist,' his first record in six years, after a February chance meeting with fellow Swedish producer Axel Boman in line at Stockholm's Funky Chicken food truck led to a deal with Boman's label Studio Barnhus.
- Willner left Kompakt, the Cologne-based label that released all six of his previous albums, citing a desire to 'try something new'; the new EP's hand-drawn-cover uniformity of his Kompakt era is replaced by a distorted pink-from-green bloom he calls 'new beginnings.'
- The 48-year-old Willner, based in Berlin since 2008, now works as a kindergarten chef — making dishes like 'tofu masala and frittata' — and said the culinary job gives him the freedom to decline touring offers and stay close to home.
- Willner described an identity crisis during COVID lockdowns, saying he 'couldn't do anything' musically and that his home studio had become 'tainted' with anxiety, comparing the block to losing the 'escape, relief, pleasure' that music had given him since his teenage punk years.
- The EP includes Willner's first-ever a capella vocal line on the track 'Another Day,' sourced through Tracklib, a legally cleared sample subscription service — Willner said copyright concerns had previously kept him from using vocals.
- Willner broke a run of releases roughly every two years since 2007's 'From Here We Go Sublime,' the album of the year that brought Wolfgang Voigt's Gas-style ambience into a poppier framework and blindsided Willner, who was then working at Sweden's government alcohol retailer Systembolaget.
Why it matters: Willner's six-year silence — and his candid description of a creative block severe enough to feel like an identity crisis — is a rare public acknowledgment from a working electronic artist that the pandemic-era productivity wave left some musicians stuck, not inspired. His pivot to Studio Barnhus and a kindergarten chef job also reframes him as an artist with hard limits on touring, a meaningful posture in a scene built around constant road time.
